The Norse element in the Orkney dialect
Donna Heddle
1.
Introduction
The Orkney and Shetland Islands, along with Caithness on the Scottish
mainland, are identified primarily in terms of their Norse cultural heritage.
Linguistically, in particular, such a focus is an imperative for maintaining
cultural identity in the Northern Isles. This paper will focus on placing the
rise and fall of Orkney Norn in its geographical, social, and historical
context and will attempt to examine the remnants of the Norn substrate in
the modern dialect.
Cultural affiliation and conflict is what ultimately drives most issues
of identity politics in the modern world. Nowhere are these issues more
overtly stated than in language politics. We cannot study language in
isolation; we must look at context and acculturation. An interdisciplinary
study of language in context is fundamental to the understanding of cultural
identity. This politicising of language involves issues of cultural inheritance:
acculturation is therefore central to our understanding of identity, its internal
diversity, and the porousness or otherwise of a language or language
variant‘s cultural borders with its linguistic neighbours. Although elements
within Lowland Scotland postulated a Germanic origin myth for itself in the
nineteenth century, Highlands and Islands Scottish cultural identity has
traditionally allied itself to the Celtic origin myth. This is diametrically
opposed to the cultural heritage of Scotland‘s most northerly island
communities.
2.
History
For almost a thousand years the language of the Orkney Islands was a
variant of Norse known as Norroena or Norn. The distinctive and culturally
unique qualities of the Orkney dialect spoken in the islands today derive
from this West Norse based sister language of Faroese, which Hansen,
Jacobsen and Weyhe note also developed from Norse brought in by settlers
in the ninth century and from early Icelandic (2003: 157).
As Michael Barnes notes, the term ‗Norn‘ is an adjective derived form
ON norroenn meaning ‗Norwegian, Norse‘, and Norroena is derived from
the cognate noun meaning ‗Norwegian language, Norse language‘.
According to Barnes (1998:1) ‗to some it denotes any piece of Scandinavian
Heddle, Donna. 2010. ‗The Norse element in the Orkney dialect‘. In Millar, Robert McColl
(ed.) 2010. Northern Lights, Northern Words. Selected Papers from the FRLSU
Conference, Kirkwall 2009. Aberdeen: Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland
and Ireland, 48-57. ISBN: 978-0-9566549-1-5
Heddle, Norse element in Orkney dialect
language material emanating from the Northern Isles, to others it means
only the spoken Scandinavian of the islands and written records of such
speech.‘
It was a language with some status. Hugh Marwick states in The
Orkney Norn (1929: xi) that it was a widely recognised term, citing a
Norwegian document from Bergen dated 1485 as the first example of the
use of the term in Scotland.
2.1 What is Norn?
Norn belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages.
Together with Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian it belongs to the West
Scandinavian group, separating it from the East Scandinavian group
consisting of Swedish and Danish. The North Germanic languages can be
further divided into an Insular Scandinavian language group, including
Icelandic, Faroese etc, and a Mainland Scandinavian language grouping of
Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish based on mutual intelligibility and the fact
that Norwegian has been heavily influenced in particular by Danish during
the last millennium, due to Danish hegemony in Norway, and has therefore
diverged from Faroese and Icelandic. Norn is generally considered to have
been closer to Faroese and the Vestnorsk dialects of Norway than Icelandic
and would have been mutually intelligible with them. This mutual
intelligibility has been established by, inter alia, Oslund (2006: 133).
Norn is to be distinguished from the present day dialects of the
Northern isles, termed by linguists ‗Orcadian‘, ‗Shetlandic‘ or more recently
‗Insular Scots‘, and known to the inhabitants as ‗Orkney‘ and ‗Shetland‘ or
‗Shaetlan‘. In chapter 1 of The Edinburgh Companion to Scots ,‘A Brief
History of Scots‘, John Corbett et al. note the legacy of Norn dialect in the
Northern Isles: ‗Old Norse and Norn however impacted powerfully on the
placenames of the northern isles and on the everyday vocabulary of the
Insular variety of Scots.‘ (2003: 5)
The linguistic aspects of Norn, such as phonology, can be difficult to
evidence from the few written sources that do exist. Traits shared with
dialects of Norwegian, including a voicing of /p, t, k/ to [b, d, g] before or
between vowels, can however be extrapolated from the modern dialect.
The features of Norn grammar were very similar to the other
Scandinavian languages. There were two numbers, three genders and four
cases (nominative, accusative, genitive and dative). The two main
conjugations of verbs in present and past tense were also extant and like all
other North Germanic languages, it used a suffix instead of a preposited
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Heddle, Norse element in Orkney dialect
article to indicate definiteness as in Norwegian today: hus (‗house‘); huset
(‗the house‘).
Remnants of this Norn are present throughout Orkney and Shetland
mainly due to the sheer scale of the Norse settlement of Orkney, a result of
which was the obliteration of whatever indigenous language was spoken in
Orkney by the new Viking language. Unfortunately, because Norn was the
language of the common people, it was very rarely, if ever, written down what remains includes a version of the Lord's Prayer and a ballad. Although
official documents do exist from this period, they were generally written in
Norwegian.
Norn remained the language of Orkney until the early fifteenth
century, but, contrary to popular belief, its decline began well before the
islands were annexed to Scotland in 1468.
The first Scots influence was felt on the Church. Although the
bishopric of Orkney was still subject to Norway, its bishops had shown a
tendency to follow Scottish practices. The eradication of Norn thus became
part of the political process of the transfer of power in Orkney from Norway
to Scotland. By 1312, the Scots language used by the highly literate clergy
soon became more commonly used in higher status circles and the Scots
calendar had been adopted. Norn was steadily eroded as a language of
governance and the pledging of Orkney to Scotland as part of the dowry of
Margaret of Denmark in 1468 (known as the Impignoration) merely
accelerated the process. Scots became the language of governance and Norn
as an extant language disappeared very quickly. The secular Scots influence
on Orkney really began after 1379 when the earldom was passed from the
Norse line which had culminated in the Angus and Strathearn succession of
Scottish earls with Norse descent to the purely Scots Sinclair line. This was
nearly one hundred years before the impignoration and the Scots rule of
Orkney was clearly a deciding factor in the Danish decision to impignorate
Orkney rather than Shetland – still firmly under Norse rule.
Such cultural changes in religious and secular society, coupled with
the economic changes, meant that the old tongue began to die out and was
certainly considered of very low status. Norn therefore remained spoken in
rural areas only for 300 years or so longer and, from the late 1500s to the
early 1700s, most Orcadians were probably in fact bilingual - speaking both
Norn and Scots English.
This bilingual tendency is also noted by Martin Martin in relation to
Orkney, in his A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (1703: 369),
a facsimile of which was republished as Curiosities of Art and Nature in
50
Heddle, Norse element in Orkney dialect
2003. He remarks that ‗The Inhabitants speak the English Tongue, several
of the Vulgar speak the Danish or Norse Language; and many among them
retain the Ancient Danish Names‘.
By the end of the 18th century, only a handful of Norn speakers were
left and it was a very devalued currency. It is not known exactly when Norn
became extinct. The last reports of Norn speakers are claimed to be from the
nineteenth century, but it is more likely that the language was dying out in
the late eighteenth century (Price 1984: 203). The more isolated islands of
Foula and Unst are variously claimed as the last refuges of the language in
Shetland. Walter Sutherland from Skaw in Unst, who died about 1850, has
been cited as the last native speaker of the Norn language, but this is not the
prevalent academic view. Dialects of Norse had also been spoken on
mainland Scotland – for example, in Caithness – but here they became
extinct many centuries before Norn died on Orkney and Shetland. Hence,
some scholars also speak about ‗Caithness Norn‘, although even less is
known about ‗Caithness Norn‘ than about Orkney and Shetland Norn.
2.2 The Modern Era
In more modern times the Norn element in the dialect of the islands has
been investigated by two key scholars — Jakobsen, in his Etymological
Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland, and Marwick in The Orkney
Norn. Marwick (1929: xxvii) says: ‘The two tongues (Norn and Scots) were
cognate; many words were practically identical in each, and, before the one
lapsed, each language must have been largely stocked with words from the
other. The speech of Orkney to-day must be termed Scots, but it is still
richly stocked with words that were part and parcel of the Orkney Norn. . . .
On the other hand, before it ultimately died, the Norn tongue must have
been increasingly impregnated with words from Scots. Yet the change was
something more than a steady inflation of Norn with Scots words until it
became more Scots than Norn. What probably happened was that the
common everyday phraseology of Norn ceased and was replaced by the
corresponding Scots terms of speech. In this respect the most important
change would be in the pronouns, common verbs and the intermediary
words – prepositions and conjunctions.‘ This last area of note is in fact
perhaps the most significant legacy of Norn in the present day dialect and
one which this essay will explore further.
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Heddle, Norse element in Orkney dialect
2.3 Discussion
Why has any form of Norse based Orkney dialect survived at all? Could this
be an example of cultural conflict polarising attitudes to a beleaguered
language with a bit of guerrilla warfare, of using dialect as a prime cultural
marker?
The Scots settlers who came to Orkney and Shetland were from all
walks of life and from all the airts of Scotland. They brought with them
divergencies in pronunciation and in vocabulary which were assimilated
into the Scots dialect used as lingua franca in Orkney and Shetland and
which would have cross fertilised with the extant Norn substrate. Therefore
the Scots itself was under siege from the indigenous dialects and later on
from the Standard English taught in schools and the modern usage of
transatlantic English by the younger generation. So the indigenous dialects
were not completely subsumed by an all conquering dominant language
variant - because there wasn‘t one extant.
However, the modern dialect is indeed essentially Scots,
encompassing most of the words in daily use as well as inflectional forms;
but the Norn substrate still makes its influence strongly felt not only in the
vocabulary, but also in the syntax. This influence has perhaps been explored
most in terms of vocabulary. Gunnel Melchers (1981) noted, for example,
that the key areas exhibiting Norn substrate were:
(a) Nouns, particularly concrete ones. e.g. flowers and plants
(b) Jocular and derisive names and pet names.
(c) Words expressing qualities and behaviours, such as anger or ill humour
(d) Adjectives that denote the range of colours of domestic animals.
(e) Words relating to the weather, the wind, the sea, and fishing, such as
roost, a whirlpool, from ON rósta, meaning tumult, and to the superstitions
of fishermen.
(f) Seasons and holidays, such as Voar, the spring, from ON vár.
Even after Norn stopped being a language in everyday usage, vocabulary,
rhymes and bits of conversation remained. It maintained a subversive role
in the sustenance of cultural identity. The above categories are all to do with
culture and environment. Early scholars attempted to evaluate this effect on
the dialects. Jakobsen‘s three visits to Shetland at the end of the nineteenth
century garnered some 10,000 words which he considered to be of Norn
origin. Marwick‘s research in Orkney in the early twentieth century
identified about 3000 Norn words in the Orkney dialect of the period. These
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Heddle, Norse element in Orkney dialect
scholars and other studies can help us to evaluate a Norn substrate in the
dialect of the Northern isles but, as Michael Barnes notes in The Norn
languages of Orkney and Shetland, there is no definite description of these
dialects in the nineteenth or twentieth century to work from. The issue of
Norn as a quantifiable language base is therefore a problematic one.
2.4 Norn in use today
Most of the use of actual Norn/Norse in modern day Orkney and Shetland is
politically motivated and purely ceremonial, and mostly in Old Norse rather
than Norn itself: for example Shetland‘s motto is með lögum skal land
byggia (‗with law shall land be built‘).
Another example of the use of Norse/Norn in the Northern Isles can
be found in the names of ferries, which is a self conscious usage to
underline the islands‘ Viking heritage and the historical sailing links to
Scandinavia: for example, Northlink Ferries has ships named MV
Hamnavoe (after the old name for Stromness), MV Hjaltland (Shetland),
and MV Hrossey (‗Horse Island‘, an old name for Mainland Orkney).
Beyond these rather artificial survivals, however, Norn influence –
of greater or lesser strength – can be found at all levels of the Scots dialects
of the Northern Isles.
3.
Norn elements in the modern dialect
3.1 Intonation
Orkney dialect differs from Shetland in that Shetland follows Nordic stress
patterns whereas Orkney has a rising intonation akin to Welsh or Irish – in
fact, Orcadians are often mistaken for them! The source of the prosody of
Orkney and Shetland dialects is difficult to determine.
Klaske van Leyden has noted that there is a difference in cadence
between Orkney and Shetland which she subscribes ultimately to Celtic
influence on the Orkney variant. This is not a position I would endorse and
indeed, van Leyden notes ‗However, given the historical links between the
Northern Isles and western Scandinavia, it is quite surprising that one
should find eastern Scandinavian intonation in Orkney, but not in Shetland
dialect, which appears to be the most ‗Scandinavian‘ of the two varieties in
terms of temporal organisation and lexis.‘ (2006:22). As far as intonation is
concerned, melodic differences between the two dialects appears to lie in
the accent lending pitch rise. The Shetland rise is on the stressed syllable
while the Orkney rise is post stressed syllable. Could there be a more
Nordic explanation? I proffer the following theory in progress for debate.
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Heddle, Norse element in Orkney dialect
The theory is based on the proposition that Old Norse had a pitch
accent as well as a stress accent. We do not of course know what this
sounded like, but if we accept that it existed we can formulate an
explanation of some kind for the rising intonation which is such a feature of
the Orkney dialect and tie it firmly back into the Norse linguistic heritage.
One suggestion – which sadly cannot be verified – is that the pitch
accent may well have survived in Orkney as a result of a lack of contrast on
various levels with Scandinavia at a much earlier date than Shetland, where
the rising cadence is not found. The rising intonation would therefore have
been part of the linguistic and cultural identity primary markers for Orkney
and thus would have survived both as a conscious and unconscious reminder
of the Norse heritage. Interestingly, the rising intonation also survives in
East Norwegian (as noted by van Leyden), which was an area whose
linguistic and cultural identity was polarised by its proximity to Sweden.
This would merit further study.
3.2 Vowels
The vowel systems of modern Orkney dialect are generally Scots and it has
been suggested that Norn speakers with their rich vowel system but
relatively small number of consonant phonemes could more readily imitate
the Scots vowels. It is difficult, therefore to isolate any vowel sounds which
came into the dialect directly from Norn.
3.3 Syntax
3.3.1 Nouns and pronouns
There are a number of significant syntactical features in Orkney and
Shetland dialect which derive ultimately from Norn roots.
1. Masculine nominative ending -r still survives in a few words, e.g
chalder (oystercatcher). This would not be recognized as such by a
modern speaker.
2. Placenames, where compounds are numerous, contain older oblique
cases and inflexions from Norn – usually genitive, e.g. Savaskaill
from ON sævar-skáli, meaning sea hall.
3. The usage of a suffixed definite article is very rare in ordinary nouns
but quite common in placenames, e.g Burrian ( ON borgin, the fort)
4. The usage of a plural for a singular noun, e.g
This feet is sore but the other feet is fine. This foot is sore but the
other foot is fine. This is not confined entirely to Norse/Norn
influenced dialects but is certainly a feature of them.
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Heddle, Norse element in Orkney dialect
5. And finally, something which harks back straight to Old Norse whar means both 'who' and 'where', and may be elided from ON
hverr (who, which, what), e.g. Whar's that? Who's that?/Where's
that?
3.3.2 Verbs
1. Orkney dialect is distinguished by a use of phrasal verbs, i.e. verb +
adverb, e.g. come at = improve
2. The use of a pronoun with an imperative is straight from Old Norse,
e.g. Come thoo here! Come here! This also occurs with an
interrogative - minds thoo on, do you remember?
This usage was common in Scots dialects but is rare now. Its
retention in Orkney dialect is likely to have been supported by the
Norn substrate.
3. There is extensive evidence for the Old Norse derived use of the
verb ‗to be‘ + pp to create the passive, perfect and pluperfect of
verbs involving motion.
I war just meed the tea.
The perfective formation is more complex than this in general, as noted by
Millar (2007: 75), but this particular aspect involving motion is clearly
evident in the Orkney dialect of today.
4. The use of the verb 'to be' as an auxiliary in place of English 'to have'
is also prevalent in the modern dialect, e.g.
I'm just meed the tea ‗I have just made tea‘.
5. The use of the verb 'to be' as a future tense main verb is also
commonly found, e.g.
I'll just be ‘I will just be with you/ I am just coming/ I will just be
there‘.
3.3.3 Prepositions
Compound prepositions are a strong feature of the dialect and are most
commonly placed at the end of a sentence, e.g. I'm gan oot a luk upbye. I am
going out for a look about up the road. These were common in Scots
dialects but are rather old fashioned now. As in the case of the imperative +
2nd person pronoun construct, their retention in Orkney dialect is likely to
have been supported by the Norn substrate.
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Heddle, Norse element in Orkney dialect
4.
Conclusion
Norn and its substratal influence on Insular Scots still have an important
political and linguistic role in the modern dialect variants of Orkney, and
indeed Shetland. However, the status and awareness of the language
variants of Orkney and Shetland has been slowly eroded by the cultural
changes faced by the Northern Isles in the 19th and 20th centuries. The
dialects are in a state of flux and are changing rapidly due to the constant
influences of television and education as well as the large number of
incomers now settled in the islands. Language is still a political issue for the
Northern isles. Now, as we stand on the cusp of the new millennium, it is
time for us to cherish our Nordic linguistic and cultural heritage, for in our
past lie the seeds of our future, and without our tongue, we cannot speak for
ourselves.
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